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EP2 AF Wave 1 review....

Rather than edit the previous post, I'll just do a new one...

First observation:
Open the boxes from the bottom!!! If you carefully slice the tape and unfold the flaps on the box bottom, the inner packaging slides out easily, and everything can be replaced mintily.
The downside is that the stands are underneath the plastic pedestal that holds up the ship, and that plastic bubble is glued to the bottom cardboard of the inner packaging. I carefully sliced along two sides of the plastic bubble over the stand, and pried/slid out the stand. When I put the box back together, the cuts look pretty much invisible.

I like the box designs. The box footprint is about the same as the original series boxes, and the packaging is much nicer than the EP1s. But I would've much rather seen Hasbro spend the extra $ to make such nice boxes on the quality / features of the ships themselves!

Last thing on the boxes - Hasbro is playing it much closer to the vest this time around as far as promoting any additional AF offerings on the boxes. Only the three ships in this wave are advertised on the backs of the boxes.

X-Wing
The paint detail is much better than the vanilla original, more comparable to the Dagobah in paint detail, but without the swampiness. The R2 unit is tight enough in the fuselage that I'm not willing to pull any harder than I already have tried, and although it feels a little loose, I could not pull it out. I don't know for sure if it's been glued-in or not. There's a texture to the paint wash effect on the laser cannons, nose tip, leading edges of the engine nacelles and starting immediately aft of the cockpit & running over the R2 unit about 1/2 way to the trailing end of the fuselage that has an almost graphite-flake quality, like the powder that leaks out of an etch-a-sketch. But it doesn't rub off. It's a nice effect. The cockpit does open, in case you have an extra pilot somewhere you'd like to drop-in. Surprisingly, the inner cockpit also does retain the original decals.

Now the bad part.... Hasbro went cheap on assembly. There's a mile of slop in the wings when you go to change the wing formation. The upper and lower sets of wings slide fore/aft in relation to each other like two new playing cards, and the upper & lower wings refuse to stay acceptably together in the closed position. There's too much light showing between them to make a decent wings-closed display. Hasbro also changed to a softer plastic on the x-wing landing gear, and on mine, the aft right landing gear skid isn't installed properly and twists outboard toe-out. I'll post a scan. It can be turned to the correct position, but doesn't stay there.

Millennium Falcon
This one is my favorite of the three in this wave.
Other than the paint (which is very cool, if not arguably just a bit overdone), the blank panel that covers the old missile launcher, and a slightly whiter & again maybe softer plastic used for the landing skids, this is the same falcon as the Classic Duels version, with moving dish, pop-up gunners pod, opening cockpit & cargo area, etc.. No JKF inscription. I like the paint job. It has a real smokey/scorchy quality over most of the fuselage, and that cool graphite-ish paint on the top of the opening cockpit area.

All three ships have discrete "Hasbro China 2002 LFL" stampings on the bottom.

The new stands have nice gold embossed lettering, but as was already pointed out - no recess to hold figures. You can just barely catch it in the scan, and you can really see it in-person on the stands where the recess for the figures was eliminated from the mold. There's a definite mark on the plastic on the top and bottom of the stand in that area.And since the words 'Action Fleet' are a completely different stylized typeface than any of the previous versions, I think this indicates that the decision to cut the figures came fairly late in the process for the EP2 AF product line. It seems clear that the molds for the EP2 stands were originally designed with the recesses for figures, then revised quickly and fairly poorly.

Does anyone know when the 2nd wave is scheduled to debut?

Last edited by SWAFMAN; 07-27-2002 at 08:28 PM.

{{{r2dee2}}}{{{VT}}}
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"We have enough youth. We need a fountain of SMART!"

FANTASTIC PICS SWAFFY!!! I was going to do the same thing as you and compare each vehicle to previously released ones, but haven't had the chance. I did put up a couple of pics HERE but I don't have the wonderful comparisons you have. Great job! Thanks for sharing

Great pics Swaffy and R2. It's weird that they've made the same paint mistake as the previous versions by leaving the lower gunner station windows unpainted. I wish they had resculpted the main ramp section, that's one thing that bugged me about the original AF sculpt. I wonder why Hasbro changed the screws and removed a screw hole on the ship's underside left.

Darth Vader is becoming the Mickey Mouse of Star Wars.

Kylo Ren - came from Space Brooklyn, although he moved to Space Williamsburg before it was trendy.

The use of a lightsaber does not make one a Jedi, it is the ability to not use it.

Just scored a set at 3rd and Wadsworth (for you Colorado collectors out there). They had three more sets after I got mine. Now I just need the Battle Packs.

I was probably there for a total of five minutes and during that time two families came up and told their kid to pick out a figure and both times the kid looked around and then saw the Action Fleet ships and said "These are COOL!". Both kids ended up getting an AF instead of a figure and I didn't even have to show them to the kids. They found them on their own. I would say that is a good sign that his line will be a success.